August 23, 2013: Still Studying: Known Unknowns

[With a new school year on the horizon, it’s important to acknowledge how much I continue to learn about America. So in this series, I’ll highlight—briefly, ‘cause I don’t know much yet!—subjects about which I’ve only recently learned. Add things you’re learning or have recently learned for a weekend post that’ll teach us all, please!]

On one of the best ways to learn new things in the 21^st century.

Although it took me a good while to come around, I’m definitely a convert: Twitter serves multiple purposes, including very quick and efficient communication (even with folks we don’t know and who might well ignore or miss an email) and following events or conversations we can’t otherwise watch or attend. But it’s also exceptionally good at highlighting stories we might miss; mostly contemporary ones, to be sure, but also and most compellingly scholarly, cultural, and historical ones. To wit, here are three things I learned about from just a few minutes reading my Twitter feed on this random day (which I won’t divulge, so you don’t get too deep inside the belly of this blog-writing beast):

1)      Pauli Murray was a civil rights lawyer and the first African American female episcopal priest (thanks Shane Landrum!);

2)      These very interesting statistics about gender and families in academia, and specifically among history professors (thanks Vanessa Varin!);

3)      A nuanced and compelling take on disability and race in the TV detective show Monk (thanks Anne Jamison!).

It’s a brave new world out there—and for those of us still studying, which is to say all of us, a very exciting one to boot. Crowd-sourced post this weekend,

Ben

PS. So what are you still studying?